English for Radioengineering Students

5.8. Read the text.

HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE USA

“Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our progress in education.”

J. Kennedy

In the United States, education is offered at all levels from kindergarten to graduate school by both public and private institutions. Elementary and secondary education involves 12 years of schooling, the successful completion of

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which leads to a high school diploma. Education is free and compulsory in all states, from the age of 6 till 16 (or 18).

Children move on to high school or secondary school in the ninth grade, where they continue until the twelfth grade. Admission to the American high school is automatic on completion of the elementary school. There are two basic types of high schools: one with a more academic curriculum, preparing students for admission to college, and the other offering primarily vocational education.

In order to receive the high school diploma necessary in most states to get into college, students must accumulate a minimum number of credits, which are awarded for the successful completion of each course. Students hoping to be admitted to the more famous universities such as Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, have rigid scholastic requirements for entrance, including an examination. Extracurricular activity (such as playing for one of the school’s sports teams, working on the school newspaper, or singing in a chorus) is also very important in the American school system and is taken into consideration by colleges and employers.

There are about 3,000 colleges and universities, both private and public, in the United States. They all offer their own choice of studies, setting their own admission standards and deciding which students meet those standards. The greater the prestige of the university, the higher the credits and grades required.

The terms college and university are often used interchangeably, as college is used to refer to all undergraduate education and the four-year undergraduate programme, leading to a Bachelor’s Degree. Universities tend to be larger than colleges and also have graduate schools where students can receive post-graduate education.

During the first two years students usually follow general courses in the arts or sciences and then choose a major (the subject or area of studies in which they concentrate). Credits (with grades) are awarded for the successful completion of each course. It usually takes four years to meet the requirements for a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree. A Master of Arts or Master of Science degree may be obtained in one or two additional years. The highest academic degree is the Doctor of Philosophy. It may take any number of years to complete the original research work necessary to obtain this degree.

The executive head of a college or a university is usually called the president. The various colleges or schools which take up a university are headed by deans. Within a school or college there may be departments according to subject matter fields, each of which may be headed by a professor who is designated as department head or chairman. Other members of the faculty hold academic ranks, such as instructor, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor.

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5.9.Read the following statements and decide if they are true (T) or false (F).

1.One has to pay in order to study at American public schools.

2.There are twelve grades in American schools.

3.The US is the largest country in the world.

4.At a high school students can get vocational education.

5.When completing each course at a college students get credits.

6.Extra-curricular activities are taken into consideration when entering the university.

7.You can obtain a bachelor’s degree at American colleges as well as at universities.

8.Bachelors have to study one or two additional years to obtain a Master of Science degree.

9.It is necessary to complete original research work to be the Doctor of Philosophy.

10.The executive head of a college or a university is a guidance counselor.

5.10. Read the text again and answer the questions.

1.What age do children start the education in the USA?

2.What types of high schools are there in the USA?

3.Do you have to get the high school diploma to enter a college?

4.Is the education in the USA free?

5.What is the difference between a college and a university?

6.Can you obtain a Master degree at a college?

7.Who are college departments headed by?

8.How many years do you have to study to get a Master Degree?

9.What do Russian and American universities have in common?

10.Would you like to get education in the USA? Why? Why not?

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2.You are sure to become a good specialist in radioengineering.

a)Вы обязательно станете хорошим специалистом в радиотехнике.

b)Вы уверены, что станете хорошим специалистом в радиотехнике.

3.Your article is considered to be the best in this scientific magazine.

a)Ваша статья – лучшая в этом научном журнале.

b)Считают, что ваша статья – лучшая в этом научном журнале.

4.The experiment is supposed to be finished in January.

a)Предполагают, что эксперимент будет закончен в январе.

b)Эксперимент обязательно будет закончен в январе.

5.The results of the elections are expected to be announced tomorrow.

а) Результаты выборов будут объявлены завтра.

b)Ожидают, что результаты выборов будут объявлены завтра.

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READING COURSE

Unit 1. COMMUNICATION

Text A History of Communication Systems Text B History of Radio

Grammar: functions of the verbs to be, to have, to do; multifunctional words it, one, that; adjectives and adverbs: degrees of comparison

Text A

HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

Pretext exercises

1.1. Read the following words and expressions and try to guess their meaning.

Signal, visual telegraphy, communication system, operator, interval, kilometer, commercial, electrical telegraph, transatlantic, to demonstrate, Internet, Nobel Prize, mechanical, device, disk, television, problem, teletype, calculator, computer, protocol.

1.2. Read the following words and mind their pronunciation.

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1.3. Read the text.

HISTORY OF COMMUNICATION SYSTEMS

The history of telecommunication is an important part of the larger history of communication. Early communications included smoke signals and drums. Drums were used by natives in Africa, New Guinea and South America, and smoke signals in North America

and China.

In 1792, a French engineer, Claude Chappe built the first visual telegraphy (or semaphore) system between Lille and Paris. However, semaphore as a communication system suffered from the need for skilled operators and expensive towers often at intervals of only ten to thirty kilometers (six to nineteen miles). As a result, the last commercial line was abandoned in 1880.

The first commercial electrical telegraph was constructed in England by Sir Charles Wheatstone and Sir William Fothergill Cooke. The first successful transatlantic telegraph cable was completed on the 27th of July, 1866, allowing transatlantic telecommunication for the first time.

The conventional telephone was invented by Alexander Bell in 1876. The first commercial telephone services were set-up in 1878 and 1879 on both sides of the Atlantic in the cities of New Haven and London. The technology grew quickly; intercity lines and telephone exchanges were built in every major city of the United States by the mid-1880s.

In December 1901, Guglielmo Marconi established wireless communication between Britain and the United States; he received the Nobel Prize for physics in 1909 (which he shared with Karl Braun).

On the 25th of March, 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird publicly demonstrated the transmission of moving silhouette pictures at the London department store Selfridges. Baird’s first devices relied upon the Nipkow disk and thus became known as the mechanical television.

However, most of the 20th century televisions depended upon the cathode ray tube invented by Karl Braun. John Logie Baird switched from mechanical television and became a pioneer of colour television using cathode-ray tubes.

In September 1940, George Stibitz was able to transmit problems using teletype to his Complex Number Computer in New York and to receive the computed results back at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In the 1960s, researchers started investigating packet switching – a technology that would allow chunks of data to be sent to different computers without first passing through a centralized mainframe. In September 1981, RFC 791 introduced the Internet Protocol v4 (IPv4) and RFC 793 introduced the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) – thus creating the TCP/IP protocol that much of the Internet relies upon today.

Internet access became widespread late in the century, using the old telephone and television networks.

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Text B

HISTORY OF RADIO

Pretext exercises

1.6. Read the following words and try to guess their meaning.

Physicist, phenomenon, stress, reality, concept, theory, battery, apparatus, centre, radius, technique, idea, genius, experiment, radio, system, telegraph, communication, telephone, radiation.

1.7. Read the following words and mind their pronunciation.

1.8. Read the text.

HISTORY OF RADIO

Within the history of radio, several people were involved in the invention of radio and there were many key inventions in what became the modern system of wireless. Radio development began as “wireless telegraphy”. Radio was developed along with two other key inventions, the telegraph and the telephone.

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During the early development of wireless technology and long after its wide use people disputed who invented the radio. The matter was important for economic, political and nationalistic reasons.

The history of radio begins perhaps with Joseph Henry, an American physicist, who discovered in 1842 that electrical discharges were oscillating. Then a step forward was taken by James Maxwell, a Scottish physicist and one of the great mathematical geniuses of the 19th century. By means of mathematical reasoning

Maxwell showed that all electrical and magnetic phenomena could be reduced to stresses and motions in the medium, which he called the ether. Today we know that this electrical medium does not exist in reality. Yet this concept helped greatly, and allowed Maxwell to put forward his theory that the velocity of electric waves in air should be equal to the velocity of light waves. Both of them were the same kind of waves and differed only in wave length.

In 1878, David Hughes, an American physicist, made another important discovery in the history of radio. He found that a loose contact in a circuit containing a battery and a telephone receiver would give rise to sounds in the receiver which corresponded to the sounds that hit the diaphragm of the mouthpiece. Hughes contemporaries claimed that the detected effects were due to

electromagnetic induction. The scientist used his apparatus to transmit over a few hundred yards, using a transmitter and a receiver.

Next we must turn to Heinrich Hertz, the famous German physicist, who was the first to create, detect and measure electromagnetic waves. He experimentally confirmed Maxwell’s theory. However, Hertz did not devise a system for actual general use nor describe the

application of the technology. He only demonstrated that radio radiation had all the properties of waves (now called electromagnetic radiation). His setup for a source and detector of radio waves (then called Hertzian waves) contained a primitive radio system capable of transmitting and receiving radio waves through free space. Hertz could detect radio waves about 20 meters from the transmitter in his laboratory. He did not try to transmit further because he wanted to prove electromagnetic theory, not to develop wireless communication.

In 1895, Russian scientist A.S. Popov demonstrated the first radio receiver which he called “an apparatus for the detection and registration of electric oscillations”. He became the inventor of the radio, and May 7 is celebrated each year as ‘Radio Day’ in the Russian Federation.

The word “radio” comes from the Latin word “radius” – a straight line drawn from the centre of a circle to a point on its circumference. The term “radio” now means the radiation of waves by transmitting stations, their propagation through space and reception by receiving stations. The radio technique has become closely associated with many other branches of science and engineering.

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